Video ads to appear in Facebook news feeds in 2013

Having already ticked off many users in late 2012 with
photo-licensing changes, sharing limitations, and an end to policy
voting, Facebook plans to insert video ads into users' News Feeds
in 2013, according to a report.

Facebook plans to unveil 15-second video ads by April within
both mobile and desktop news feeds, several advertising executives tell Ad Age. The
ads will start playing automatically, according to two of the
executives, and Facebook has reportedly not decided whether to mute
audio from the ads. Ad Age reports that the
commercials will even expand beyond the middle web page section
that normally contains the news feed, taking over the left and
right rails of the page as well.

Facebook declined to comment. Video ads are a dicey topic for
the social network. On the one hand, they are a great way for
Facebook to cook up revenue, at least as far as Wall Street
analysts are concerned. But video ads -- in particular those that play
automatically -- are basically guaranteed to annoy users. And user
patience with Facebook is already wearing thin. The social network
generated huge controversy in this month when it revised the Instagram terms of service to allow
advertisers free use of people's names and photos. Shortly before
that, Facebook upset some users by limiting how its photos could be
shared on the rival site Twitter. And before that Facebook pissed
some people off by ending a system that let people vote on changes to how the
site was run. That's all since late November.

For years now, Facebook has been able to keep growing despite a
whole slew of controversies and annoying changes. For all the
hubbub in the press and among the digerati, ordinary people have by
and large stuck by the big blue juggernaut. The question now is how
much more they can take.